“Well, you’ve stirred him all right,” he said; “he wants you to marry me now. We’ll do it at once before he changes his mind.”
“In a hurry like this!” she cried. “Oh, I couldn’t.”
“All right,” he replied, and seated himself on the door-step. “Then I’ll stay and be murdered.”
For a moment Kate stood irresolute, wringing her hands.
“Oh, what shall I do!” she murmured.
“I told you—marry me now,” he replied. He went to her, and, taking her hands, said quickly: “I’ve the license; I’ve had it for weeks. It would be the fine thing, wouldn’t it, to have it found like that on my dead body?”
“I think I should die of shame,” she confessed. “It would hardly seem decent.”
“It’s the true word you say, Katie dear. You see, there’s nothing left but to use it.”
“Sure, it would make me feel like a widow, and me not yet a wife,” she said. “I’ll go, Michael. It’s all that’s left for us now. Hurry.”
INSIDE the barred window Kerrigan and her father saw them hasten away. Her father chuckled.